In a data visualization, every element is encoding something. Placement, spacing, color, height, width, area – each has meaning. But what meaning?

The Data Visualization Catalog is a great resource for thinking through encoding.

Hands on

We’re going to start with a simple chart project. Rachel can tell us where she got this data, but …

Criminal Deportations

Region and country of nationality,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011,2012,2013
El Salvador,2805,2827,3850,4949,5558,6344,8368,8507,8674,9440
Guatemala,2176,2143,3850,3917,5138,6547,9432,11718,13494,15365
Honduras,2544,2704,5752,5236,5476,6998,10420,10825,13815,16609

Child Migrant Apprehensions

Country,FY 2009,FY 2010,FY 2011,FY 2012,FY 2013,FY 2014,FY 2015
El Salvador,1221,1910,1394,3314,5990,16404,1797
Guatemala,1115,1517,1565,3835,8068,17057,3548
Honduras,968,1017,974,2997,6747,18244,951

Your first step is going to be to copy this into a spreadsheet and if it doesn’t immediately break into columns, use Data > Text to Columns to break it out. As ever, read all dialogs closely. Understand, don’t just click “okay”

We’re going to use a few mechanisms to re-arrange these numbers so we can try charting them in …

• Medium’s Charted
• Quartz’s ChartBuilder
• RAW – for flat graphics to edit in illustrator

Charts and things has a nice post on choosing the best form.